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OTHER KEYS TO TRAINING SUCCESS

If you follow the "Five Steps to Training Success" discussed previously, you have a good chance of creating a skilled work force.  Here are some more suggestions for making your training stick.

Use Memory Aids
It is very human for us to forget rules,  numbers, sequences, steps, and so on. There is just so much competition - so many things to remember. What we need is an aid - a way of relating what we already know to something new or a rhyme to fix the rule in memory. For example, remember this from school - "i" before "e" except after "c," or when sounded as "a" as in neighbor or weigh. That is a short, simple aid to memory. Watch your television tonight, you will probably see an advertisement something like this, "Need money? Call 1-800-NEW-LOAN.''  These are nothing more than associations - ways to remember. Any time you are trying to teach something that must be remembered - a sequence of steps, a number, a rule to follow, and so on - try to find a memory aid. Make up a rhyme, spell out a word, or associate the new with something already known. Any of these will aid memory.  

Use the Rule of "5 to 9"
A tremendous amount of research has been conducted on the ability of the average person to remember and recall sequences of numbers. The results of this research are fairly consistent - most people can effectively remember a sequence of no more than five to nine numbers. Longer sequences must be broken down into segments to aid memory. Applications of this "5 to 9" rule are very common. For example, look at your telephone number: three digit area code, three-digit prefix, and four-digit number. Most people can learn and remember a telephone number because it is broken into short sequences of five or fewer numbers. The same is true of social security numbers and many other sequences people need to remember.

Provide a Job Aid
Any time you must teach people to execute a sequence of steps in a particular order, especially if the sequence is long, complex and/or will not be executed frequently, provide a job aid. In its simplest form, a job aid is nothing more than the list of steps in the proper sequence - perhaps a checklist. A pilot's preflight checklist is a job aid. Forms that employees complete in the performance of a task or transaction can also serve as job aids, as can prompts on a computer screen. In our training, we teach managers and supervisors to conduct meetings with their employees following a carefully designed agenda. To help them prepare and conduct these meetings, we provide a simple one-page form. The form serves not only as a record of the meeting, (when completed, the form provides a summary of the minutes) but also as a memory aid for the manager/supervisor conducting the meeting to ensure that every item is covered, and covered in the right sequence.

Teach People to Encode, and Decoding Will Follow
Suppose an employee needs to know how to read an order form (decode), and how to complete an order form (encode). Which skill do you  teach  first - reading or completing?  The answer is completing (encoding).  The reasons for this is that once a person learns to complete the form correctly (encode), he or she is likely also to learn simultaneously to read the form (decode). You have taught two skills at the same time.  Even if the person may never be required to actually complete the form (or make a drawing, etc.), it may be better to teach him or her to do so. If you do, a better understanding of the form's content is likely lo follow. (This is one exception to the rule that you should not teach a skill that employees will not use immediately.)

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